do_While(True)

I am going to miss it here.
I'm going to miss Laurel and Tom and Jonathan and Chris and Bruce.
I'm going to miss Brent and Haven and the Game Habitat and the weather.
I'm going to miss my housemates, who I really like even if I never get to hang out with them.
There's a lot that I'm going to miss when I get out of here.

But the thought of being able to go home is so great that it makes me want to cry.

So this evening my friend Laurel got in a little fight with her boyfriend. She was irritated, so we chatted about it, and she said that she was upset and I guess was making a point of ignoring him, and he wasn't making a big deal of it. And she said that she didn't know if his not making a big deal of it was helping or making things worse; part of her wanted him to try making up for being dumb, and was irritated that he wasn't putting forth effort.

It reminded me at the time of Anastasiya, and how at one point (and maybe even up through present day) when she would get angry or upset, she'd run away, but part of her always wished and hoped that someone would chase after her. Because, I guess, if someone chased her when she ran, then she could trust that they wanted to be there, with her.

It didn't strike me until now that I'm like that, too. I don't run, but I hide. And I want very badly for someone to come and find me. I've realized that I spend a lot of my time at home sitting in my room, sometimes actively avoiding my house mates -- not because I don't like them, but because I'm really afraid of being rejected by them. I hide because I like them, and because I recognize that I'm of a different sort. I'm always of a different sort, wherever I go, and I don't like rejection. So, I hide; they can't reject me if they never see me.

And yet I sit here, trying to hide conspicuously, hoping that someone will find me and say, "Hey, there you are. Come hang out with us; we like you and want you around." I feel so twelve again, so scared and vulnerable. And in the end this is why people I used to know intimidate me, because they can reject me, and I've no defense to that. I think, reflecting on that, it's why I'm so open on this journal, because it's the same sort of thing: hiding in plain sight.

The thing is, I know it's ridiculous to run hoping someone chases you, to hide wishing to be found. It's what I told Anastasiya before. You can't expect people to play a game you haven't told them the rules to; you can't expect them to know that you want the opposite result from what your actions are aimed at.

I don't want to be alone, but I fear the rejection that seeking company threatens.

So, I complain a lot. And I worry a lot. It's part of my nature, not that I'm a negative person, but that I work through things best when I can talk through them -- verbally or digitally. So here I'm going to list a few reasons why I have it good:

I live in Monterey California. We've got to have the best weather in the entire country here! It doesn't often go below, say, 40 or above 70, we get a nice little rainy season in the winter, we have gorgeous blue skies and we're right next to the Pacific ocean. Really, it's a beautiful place.

I'm getting paid to earn my Master's Degree. I'm making about as much as I would expect to make in any standard entry-level IT job, and instead of working I'm getting an education that will easily double my earning potential. Never mind that I'm studying a subject I find both stimulating and challenging, or that for the first time ever I'm excited about my career prospects.

My lifestyle is such that I can hang out with friends, buy myself treats, and get my friends gifts without breaking the bank. I can generally enjoy myself without worrying about not being able to pay my bills. A bad month for me financially is one when I have to pay out of savings a little bit because I bought myself a few too many treats, and it hasn't ever meant more than just a week or two of tighter living.

I make friends easily, and have friends scattered throughout the country. I'm never particularly far from a friendly face.

I have an incredible family. Intelligent, caring, close-knit. I'm on good terms with my parents, and my siblings, my cousins. I consider a significant number of my relatives as true friends.

I've been told that people around here -- students and professors -- think I'm a natural match for my first pick of post-graduation employment, a lab out in Maryland.

So, last night after eating corn beef and having some Guinness with friends, I came home to work on a bit of my research. Very randomly I got an IM from an here-again-gone-again friend of mine (really more of a friend of a friend) from high school, Ryan. We had a pretty good conversation talking about a whole bunch of stuff starting with girls and ending somewhere around religion.

Along the religion side of things, Ryan made some comment like "unless you believe in an afterlife without physical bodies" to which I replied "no, I believe in the resurrection of the body," which is a line straight from the Apostle's Creed. And with all the disbelief and incredulity one can muster through IM, he said, "are you serious?" Yeah, I said, it's a Catholic thing. I was a little shocked myself that he would have to ask me if I meant what I'd said, though in hindsight I don't think Ryan really knows me well at all.

That's not the point of the post, though, just the set up. We went from there to talking about how he doesn't believe in the resurrection of the body because he doesn't want an old decrepit body hanging on him for all eternity which itself touched ever so lightly on the meaning of pain. Essentially, he made a comment about pain being completely unnecessary, that "there's no reason for it whatsoever," which lead to me saying I disagreed fundamentally and that I didn't care to argue the topic of pain. So we moved on.

( But I'd like to address it some here. )

So, although I haven't quite caught up on my schoolwork since missing that one week at the beginning of the semester (all the work I missed has been completed since, naturally, but I'm still a step and a half behind the rest of the class), that I'm beginning to hit my stride can be seen by the fact that I have the ability and inclination to write posts like this one.

On my way home from school today, a thought occurred to me: I don't really think 'a lot' about anything, really. I continued playing around with the idea and it's implications for the next hour or two. (And this fact, as might be imagined, made me giggle.)

( Cut 'cause it's long. )

I'm also really lucky to have the friends I have. More than I ever say, though I recognize the fact at least daily.

My world radiates to me through a computer monitor. It is a land governed by mathmatical equations, which can all be simplified into black and white - yes and no - open and closed. Or, as I like to think of them, 1s and 0s. In a vague sense, those 1s and 0s can be organized into a seies of binary numbers, powers of two, but if you think about it, a computer can't really understand 258, or 64, or 32 - Hell, it can't even understand 2! Just on and off.
( Yes or No. )

*Sigh*
I'm feeling outnumbered.
You see, I've come upon a realization.

All my friends are metalheads.
Er, I mean, liberals.

( So Much To Say )

Have you ever been to the point where you're awake, but you don't know why? Where you could go to sleep, but there's so much you could be doing - and you don't know what any of it is? Have you ever sat and stared into nothingness, knowing that you should be doing something, or that you could be doing something, or that there's something to be done - but you don't know what?

Yeah, me too.

Have you ever sat and wondered what you're doing? What you're saying? What you're thinking? I mean, literally, what you're thinking. Not 'why did I do that' but 'what is going on inside my head'? Have you ever wondered - really wondered - why you're doing what you're doing, saying what you're saying, thinking what you're thinking?

Yeah, me too.

Have you often second-guessed yourself? Found one reason for why you MIGHT do whatever it is you do, but questioned your true motivations? Have you questioned why you feel what you feel, and what it is you should feel? Have you ever wondered if what you feel is really what you feel, of it what you feel is what you want to feel? Or if what you want to feel is what you should feel? Or even if what you want to feel is REALLY what you want to feel?

Yeah, me too.

Have you ever openly thought in abstract terms? Questioning ideas and abstractions, without having anything specific for your basis? Have you ever picked apart your own thoughts, trying to find the basic components of what it is your thinking, almost as though they weren't your thoughts, but someone else's - thoughts who's authenticity needs to be examined and verified. Do you often take simple, daily observations and develop general abstractions which seem to fit together, but then, you created them, so of course they seem to fit together?

Yeah, me too.

Have you ever wanted to have a conversation with someone, but didn't want to bother with the trivial matter of talking with them? Have you ever wanted to say everything and nothing at the same time? Have you ever rejoiced and regretted the same action at the same time? Have you ever painfully wanted to see someone, and yet feared seeing them again? Have you ever wanted to be two different places, in two different ways, but for the same reason?

Yeah, me too.

Have you ever spoken as though you were mired in - something - but you really weren't? Have you ever been up thinking for the sake of thinking, talking for the sake of talking, being for the sake of being?

Have you ever been hungry and, though surrounded by cookies and chips and bread and soup, couldn't find anything to eat?

Yeah.

Me too.

Pardon my philosophical tone, but I'm awake when I'd rather be asleep, and try as I might it's not happening. Thus, I shall attempt to convey knowlege once again through this medium. We both know you'll read it anyways, and if not, I'd still be awake. Let us proceed.

I think, in a sense, I live in perpetual fear.
It's quite an interesting observation, if one thinks about it. Truthfully, I'm not the one to worry about things, as most anyone could well tell. But even giving that, I precieve "worry" most precicely as a dwelling on fears, not so much as the fears themselves. Though it may be argued that I am 'worried' about a given possibility when a fear I have prevents me, or at least hinders me, from acting. That is not the topic for discussion, though, so I will simply say that it is not the case.

I am, I think, afraid of a great many things, though I think I may well be a happier man to the extent that I leave my fears behind and act freely, without regret. Regret is perhaps my nemesis, if you will, though at base that statement doesn't quite make sense. Take a look at it and you may see what I mean. But I digress. I digress. I digress all the way back to my original statement.

I am afraid of a great many things. For fear of sounding stupid, in the many different senses of the word, I often don't speak. One may find THAT hard to believe, after reading this journal for some time, but this journal is, in part, a temporary escape from my fears. In so much as being understood is my greatest desire - which I'm still unsure whether it is or not - to that extent, being misunderstood is my greatest fear.

And that fear explain much of what I do, or more precicely, what I don't do. I was afraid, one may recall, to write the letter to Emily, a letter I desperately wished to write in order to express mysaelf, in the hope of being understood. I feared to write it for the possibility of being misunderstood, due to the failings of written, or even verbal, communication. As wonderous as they are, words can fail in much. I now 'regret', if you'll so allow me, sending that letter for the fact that, once again, I fear being misunderstood, though this time for the fact that I'm not sure that my meaning was adequetly conveyed, either in the form or the substance of the letter.

Another fear I have, I should think, is to an extent approaching people. Again, I think, my foe is the idea of 'implications', or ideas that may be pre-attached to situations and the like, I suppose. As one may tell, I'm at a loss for describing it. I like to imagine that I 'don't care' what people think (though, a topic for another time, I think that's an impossible statement, in it's basic nature), but essentially, I think that's similar to what this fear boils down to.

In a sense, I suppose, if I fear being misunderstood, my biggest fear is in what people might think, though not in the conventional sense of the phrase. I'm not AFRAID, per se, of people 'liking' or 'not liking' me (or so I imagine). It's rather a fear that someone misunderstands me, which is a much different thing. A person can dislike me, I don't aim to please all, though I don't intend to wrong anyone. The basis is that they either like or dislike me for who I am, I should suppose. A quote I heard one, or rather a rhetorical question which I enjoyed, was "Is it better to be loved for what you are not, or hated for what you are." That question, and my inevitable choice of the latter, reveales something of me.

In anycase, I suppose I shall once again attemp sleep - I've been accuse of being "windy", and I would hate to aggrivate any of you figment-people. ^_^
It's only 10:40, there's no way I can get to bed this early....

I'm such a weirdo.

Tonight, Becky and Emily went through their weekly ritual of checking their mail, except that is time Becky got on before Emily. Obviously, they're trying to keep me on my toes. ^_^

Anyways, as per usual, I IMed Becky just t'say hi. She responded (!!!) by saying she couldn't talk, which really is more than I expected. The Croft girls, it seems, aren't much for chatting online. So I wrote her back and said "Ok, I'll see ya around" again, as per usual on the off chance I get a reply. This is typical of the Croft girls, and I really don't expect anything from them - I just like to IM them and say "hi", y'know, just t'let them know I'm thinking of them or some such.

Then Becky really made my night. She replyed again of all things, and said "Love ya lots." Heeeeee, like I said,m I'm a simple kinda guy, and I donno, that kinda meant alot to me. It's significant comming from most anyone, but in particular from the Crofts. I love the Crofts - all of them. I really think they're a great bunch. *sigh* I can only hope they feel similarly towards me. I like to think they do. ^_^

Anyways, though, I suppose I'm expected to have a deep though, and appropriotly enough, I do, save that it's completely unrelated to the Crofts.

A while back - a day, maybe two, hell for all I know it could've been a week ago, but that's not the point - one of the Anyoneofus Ladies, I believe Rachel, presented me with this thought: if you didn't like doing something, you wouldn't. She was refering in particularly to my thinking and talking at all hours of the night, and really she was right - I think I have a deep-seated desire not just to express myself, but to be understood. But that's not the topic for tonight.

Not as long ago as one may think, my mom was accustomed to hearing me say something alkong the lines of "I don't want to do it, but that doesn't mean I won't." This was typically in reference to washing dishes, or cleaning my room, or some other such drudgery which we all must suffer through. In any case, it reveals something about my nature, though being me, I'm not quite sure what.

Apparently, I seem to believe in doing things which one honestly dislikes, probably for the sake of some greater good. Now while some, including perhaps myself, could argue that on some level, to some extent, washing dishes, or cleaning a room, or doing homework, or the like can be enjoyable. Admittably, they do offer some sense of satisfaction, a feeling of accomplishment.

But does this subsequent sense of accomplishment really constitute a basis for the argument that one WANTS to do these things? I would say no. Even given this sense of satisfaction, I don't think any one could truely WANT to do something that fits this criteria. While I will not say that NO ONE likes washing dishes, I can say that for a person who arguably does not like doing them, in and of itself, would not choose to do them without some higher good in mind, sand as such it is simply a means - there is no true desire to do them, even though there may be a willingness to do them.

This of course presents one with a new observation, though really it seems self evident from the preceding argument. That is, that the will is sepparate from the desires; similarly, that you need not DESIRE something to WILL it, in a sense, and contra-wise, you need not will something simply because it is desired. I would assume that this is really quite self-evident. You can want chocolate cake but not take it, and you can chto do algebra homework even if you truely dislike it.

And so, though I suppose I really haven't progressed anywhere, I would have to answer Rachel that, no, there are times when I would do things I don't particularly want to, for some higher good. An example of this, Claire might remember, is my firm stand against abortion, and my answer to some of the more personal arguments brought against Pro-Lifers. But, for fear of depressing myself on such a good night, I shall forego an explaination for now. Perhaps another, darker time.